How to run a PvT Clinic: HerO at IEM

How to run a PvT Clinic: HerO at IEM

Introduction - blink and the Current PvT Metagame

The PvT metagame has changed greatly in these past few months. Ever since the release of HotS, the meta of PvT was mainly based around defending Terran timing pushes and taking a safe third in order to get both Colossus and high templar to head into the late game. Most Protoss players, mimicking Rain, relied on ultra-defensive Robotics builds in order to get a Colossus out in time to deflect any mid game pressure. This trend changed with the rise of sOs and his Oracle macro builds, which allowed the Protoss to punish a greedy Terran. However, Terrans began to adjust their builds to get marines and turrets out in order to avoid losing SCVs. Then, the rise of blink happened. For a very long time, blink openings were limited to four-gate blink attacks off of one base. Two base blink timings became very powerful due to the ladder maps for Season 1 of ladder in 2014: every single map is very viable for blink with the exception of Habitation Station. These pushes are powerful because they can attack before medivacs get out, which forces the Terran to be extremely selective with their use of stim pack.

The next step in this style's evolution was the rise of the macro blink opening, popularized by Patience's performance at Dreamhack Winter in November, even spawning a Day 9 Daily analzying his revolutionary build, which would soon become a staple in modern PvT, especially for aggressive players like HerO. Notably, while Patience’s build goes for a very quick Robotics Facility, HerO decided to take it in the other direction and go straight into Templar. Along with the change in openers, PvT midgame styles have greatly changed as well. Colossus-based builds have declined recently due to the prevalence of 3-base timings from Terrans involving SCV pulls, resulting in more Protoss players preferring templar openings. HerO used a similar build against InNoVation to great effect and also used it in Game 4 of the same series versus Polt.

Why are these macro blink builds so good? Here are a few strengths of the build:

Delays the Terran's medivac timing, forcing him to play more defensively

Forces Terran to make adequate defenses or suffer the consequences

Very hard for Terrans to determine whether the build is all-in or macro

Gives Protoss good map control and mobility

Allows Protoss to macro up normally and get AoE at a good timing.

The Map: Polar Night

Before we get to the game, let’s take a look at the map, Polar Night, with specific interest on how the map plays in PvT.

As you can see, there are many attack points for this map. Base choice, especially for the third and fourth bases, is absolutely crucial. The three/nine o’clock (and most commonly taken) bases are very far away from the main bases, the pocket expansions behind the naturals require two sets of rocks to be taken out, and the forward bases are very open and difficult to defend. There are many attack paths on Polar Night and if the Terran has map control, they can essentially surprise the Protoss. The main base also has a lot of dead space in the bottom right/top left, making it hard for Protoss to spot for drops with just one observer. This makes base choice and base defense important because if the Terran player is allowed to constantly attack and harass the Protoss, it becomes very difficult to make a good late game army. The map is also really strong for blink, with four possible attack paths using blink:

As we will see, HerO’s strategy choice and decision making most certainly take the map into mind.

HerO played a very standard one gateway expand with a probe scout immediately after the gateway. He tried to hide the scout, but he cannot see anything besides the fact that Polt had a reaper and a Command Center. HerO used this information to discern that his opponent went for a simple reaper expand. His build differed after the cyber core finishes, as he took a very quick second gas, allowing him to get an early twilight council and start blink rather quickly. Another important thing to note was HerO’s building placement.

Walling off one side of the nexus allows for HerO to deny the scout of the twilight council

HerO went on to scout with his mothership core to make sure that Polt was not going for a widow mine drop or mech play. The MSC scouted three barracks and a squadron of marines and returned home safely, knowing that Polt was going for a standard Medivac opening.

With four warp gates and blink, HerO was able to start getting map control and putting pressure on Polt. Because HerO made only four gateways (as opposed to the six of a blink all-in), he was able to constantly make probes and match his opponent’s economy as well as get all four gases early. Although he made one overconfident blink in the middle of the map, he was able to clean up Polt’s marine force and maintain map control. He then did the blink dance around Polt’s bases, picking off a few units and a bunker. HerO demonstrated the power of blink on Polar Night, including blinking into Polt’s main the moment Polt steps out to kill a pylon. Behind this pressure, HerO built a Templar Archives in order to research his “AoE of choice”, storm. The timing of the Templar Archives can vary, but usually correlates to when the Protoss player can no longer do direct damage with blink; in game four of the series, HerO decided that his blink pressure would not accomplish anything and opted to get his Templar Archives at 7:30 instead of 9:00.

The moment the Templar Archives finishes, HerO started storm and warped in 2 high templar right after to allow the HT to gain as much energy as possible.

The Mid Game

HerO’s mid game revolved around being able to take a third and defend Polt’s aggression. His blink stalker opening allowed him to safely tech to high templar while completely skipping a robo. HerO's transition to templar is cheaper and faster compared to colossus, but the downside of that tech choice is that he did not have any observers to scout for drops. His constant probe production and early natural gasses allowed for a big increase in infrastructure as he went on to add three more gateways and two forges. Since Polt was under pressure for a very long time, he knew that he had to be aggressive and do some damage to HerO. The strength of HerO's build was that the blink timing was threatening enough to delay any 2/4 medivac pushes until both charge and storm completed, which is almost impossible off a more conservative Robo opening. HerO was very well prepared for Polt's counter attack, thanks to excellent drop defense (2 high templar and 5 zealots) and a powerful main army. This would stonewall any drop attempts by Polt while allowing HerO to establish and defend his third base. HerO had a huge advantage in the midgame because he had HT and Polt had not even started his ghost academy, allowing him to use his tech advantage to put pressure on Polt. His goal was to buy time to establish his third and Robotics Facility. He knew that if he was attacking Polt, there was no way he could be attacked. If Polt did attempt to attack by dropping him, he would be able to clean up the drop with his great unit positioning and would punish Polt with an attack into a smaller portion of Polt’s army.

Unfortunately, HerO overextended himself at the 14:30 mark. He went for an attack on Polt’s third base, but was repelled due to Polt’s massive army. While HerO had done well in defending his base, he was not able to kill very many of the units that Polt used offensively. However, HerO’s decision to warp in two HT early allowed them to have 200 energy with this push, letting HerO do some damage. Though this attack was repelled, HerO still had an ace up his sleeve.

And you thought Oracles were imbalanced...

The first thing HerO made out of the Robotics Facility was his trademark Warp Prism. He loaded two HT and two zealots into the prism and headed out for Polt’s third. The two storms and zealots killed almost twenty workers, more than making up for the failed attack 3 minutes earlier. Behind this attack, he also managed to tech up to Colossi, setting himself up nicely for the late game.

The Late Game

The biggest aspect of late game PvT is army positioning and the many ways a Protoss can damage a Terran. In reality, there are three main types of attacking:

Harassing in multiple positions at once using pylons, warp prisms, and zealot attacks. This approach avoids a direct engagement, allowing the Protoss to get extra bases or a bigger army in order to fight when THEY want to. This keeps the Terran on their toes and forces them to build extra defense, not knowing where the next attack will be coming from.

Forcing a 200 vs 200 fight. This is the riskiest choice, and is usually done when the Protoss has a good chance of winning or is in desperation mode. This is rather difficult in PvT, as it is easy to spread high templar in defense, but not when they are on the move.

Harassing a base and threatening another base at the same time. This is the tactic that HerO employed throughout the game. His warp prism positioning was extremely potent, allowing him to spread Polt very thinly. His harass forced Polt to constantly make a decision on how many units to send over to deal with it. If he sent too little, the harassment would do a lot of damage. If he sent too much, HerO could simply walk down and ravage Polt’s army and third. This harassment reduced Polt’s SCV count to 35 at 35:00, which allowed HerO to take less cost-efficient fights and still came out ahead

HerO’s late game choices and army positioning allowed him to use his extremely aggressive style to its full extent. The first thing that can be mentioned is his base defense, leaving at least one cannon and one HT near every Nexus. In the previous game, Polt used drops to come back from almost certain defeat and win, showing his ability to snipe nexi. HerO knew that Polt would try the same tactics again in this game and took measures to make sure that the drops did not do crippling damage.

HerO continued with his warp prism harass, storm dropping Polt’s fourth base and abusing the fact that Polt was always slow to react and pull his workers throughout the entire series. HerO’s army position was also very key. He always positioned his army around the left central watchtower. With this, he was able to defend his third and fourth bases and see any potential attacks onto his natural.

At 27:00, an important fight happened. Polt attacked HerO’s third with a twenty supply advantage and 3/3 upgrades (as opposed to HerO’s 2/3). However, HerO had HT spread out behind his third mineral line in order to defend drops, which translated really well into giving HerO a good spread of high templar. Another crucial aspect of this fight was that HerO was able to snipe Polt’s ghost academy with a zealot warp-in. This limited Polt to three Ghosts versus the 11 spread-out HT HerO had. While Polt had a very good army spread, a bigger army (until the middle of the fight), and an upgrade advantage, HerO was able to win the fight and take a decisive advantage in the game.

While the game went on for almost fifteen more minutes, most of it was simply back-and-forth micro and positional battles. HerO took the top left base instead of the one right by his main. Why? The answer is simple, and based on army positioning. If HerO took the base underneath his main, Polt would have had two more avenues of attack and HerO would have had to be spread out very thin, allowing for Polt to potentially make a comeback (as he did on Daedalus Point). By taking the top left base, HerO was able to continue to keep his army at the same watch tower and defend all of his bases.

Since Polt can only surprise HerO in his main, HerO could simply put many units at his main base and can close the door on Polt’s comeback attempt. All HerO had to do was take a half-decent engagement at this point and coast to victory.

Conclusion

In summary, there are many things that we can take away from HerO’s game plan. The first concept is use of aggression to buy time for investments to pay off. HerO demonstrated this three times during the game, with his blink opening to buy time for high templar, his aggression with the high templar to buy time for his Robotics Facility and his third base, and his constant harassment and storm drops to buy time for Colossus and to allow him to catch up in bases. Another concept is base choice. Instead of taking the forward base as a fourth, HerO destroyed the rocks and took the pocket expansion. This expansion went almost completely untouched for the entirety of the game, and the fact that he was able to safely mine from that base gave HerO a huge economic advantage; when it came time to take a fifth base, HerO chose a base that opened the least amount of attack paths, which prevented him from being spread out too thin. The last major concept is map control. HerO’s army was always around the central watchtower, allowing him to see all of the paths to his well chosen bases. Since Polt could not engage head-on into HerO’s army, he had no choice but to drop HerO’s main in order to do damage, allowing HerO to simply defend his main base heavily and use his main army to defend his other bases.

HerO’s well-executed build order, strategical decisions, map usage, and harassment allowed him to clinch the series against Polt. The fact that he could make all of these smart decisions after playing for over 12 hours absolutely astonishes me and gives me an even greater respect for a progamer. Congratulations HerO, you absolutely deserved this championship. GG!

These pushes are powerful because they can attack before medivacs get out, which forces the Terran to be extremely selective with their use of Stim pack. This forces the Terran to be either extremely selective with their use of Stim pack.

Very good article. I enjoyed this series very much and think it was one of the best PvT series so far this year. The article really put into perspective some of the decision making HerO uses which is always a cool thing to be able to "look into the mind" of a Pro of his caliber.

This topic is very late, agressive blink's power decreased a lot because of the MSC nerf and widow mine up. Scouting with MSC is no longer viable so the protoss need to open with a robo or a stargate in order to find out what is going on. You should have make this topic 2 or 3 weeks ago D: